Release trains provide a published schedule of changes to production. One or more application releases are associated with each release train.
Release trains have types of major, minor, and emergency. The release types are used to at this level to drive release policies on what types of changes may be delivered.
Release trains enable you to most effectively address common release control challenges.
Scheduling Simultaneous Application Releases: You can schedule multiple application releases for optimal time and resource utilization using release trains.
Designating and Adjusting Schedules: You can designate and adjust the schedules of application releases through their association to release trains.
Designating and Adjusting the Scope of Change: You can designate and adjust the scope of an application release by adding release packages to and removing them from application releases. You can use Request for Change associations to keep visibility of the scope and track scope changes.
Direct associations with release trains include the following:
Requests for Change represent operational changes that may affect multiple applications or implement system infrastructure changes within an enterprise. These are typically associated with tickets from service management systems such as Serena Service Manager.
Application Releases represent versions of applications or projects, where the application or project architecture is specified by components. One or more release packages are associated with each application release.
The following diagram shows how release packages move through the scheduled stages in two release trains, one of minor release type and the other of major release type.